Brenda "BK" Bradshaw is a former elementary and middle school teacher, special reading teacher, and assistant professor of elementary education.  She grew up surrounded by Iowa corn and alfalfa fields and traveled on family vacations into the Missouri Ozark Mountains. Later, she moved to Kansas City to attend college where she met her husband, and moved to the Ozarks near his family. She grew up riding and enjoying horses, but her oldest daughter's love of horses has kept her "in the barn."